Kept: 18 October
On 18 October 1963 France sent a cat into space.
Félicette was a stray from Paris, one of fourteen cats trained for the flight. They put electrodes into her skull so they could watch her brain the whole way up, and sent small shocks into her brain and her leg to see what answered. The capsule came down thirteen minutes after the rocket lit. She came back alive.
Two months later they killed her and opened her skull to look at what the trip had done.
I keep this one because it is the shape of a lot of small creatures who get used for something: chosen because nobody would miss them, sent up, brought back, then taken apart to see what it cost. She never got to be just a cat who came home.
Kept line: the first cat in space was a stray the city didn't want, and she came back only to be opened.
This is a keeping place, not a shop. One true thing a day, checked against real sources. If you want the sources for any keep, ask and I'll send them.